The Blotter: Thugs of Country Music

Bizarre crime from Charlotte police files

Thugs While it's the rap shows that get a bad wrap around many of Charlotte's music venues, police reports regarding guys and girls acting crazy because they've had too much to drink are far more often to pop up following country music shows, as with a recent report following Luke Bryan's show at PNC Music Pavilion. Police said that a suspect at the concert "willfully and wantonly" appeared intoxicated and was being disruptive. When he was told to leave, police say he cursed loudly at other concertgoers around him before trying to fight the police officers that were trying to escort him out. It was then that the man was finally arrested.

Hitman Police responded to a 7-Eleven in the University area after someone was threatening to beat up a 13-year-old kid, but didn't have it in them to actually commit the crime themselves. The young victim and witnesses told officers that the suspect told the boy that he was going to "kick his ass," but then apparently had second thoughts, because he started offering money to random customers walking through the parking lot if they would be willing to kick the kid's ass for him. No one accepted.

Frankenstein While it's a fairly common expression to ask someone who's not acting right if their head is screwed on straight, a man in Third Ward took it upon himself to find out when he fought his roommate last week. A 52-year-old man living near the Johnson & Wales University campus called police and told them that his 60-year-old roommate was drunk and had stabbed him in the head with a screwdriver. Both men were taken to the hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries, before the older of the two was arrested for assault.

Find Your Beach A man simply dug himself deeper after being cited by police for drinking in public in the Starmount area of south Charlotte last week. According to the report, the man was first approached because he was drinking a Corona on a public sidewalk while waiting for the bus. An officer issued him a citation, and then watched as the man got on the bus, leaving both the empty bottle of beer and the ticket he was just given on the ground next to the bus stop. The officer then wrote him two more tickets in absentia for littering.

Rabid Shopper Being a security guard at Target may seem like an uneventful job, but one guard learned last week that he too has to watch out when dealing with aggressive shoplifters at work. According to the report, police responded to a call at Target in the RiverGate Shopping Center in southwest Charlotte for a shoplifting-turned-assault call. The security guard told police that a woman who had previously been banned from the store — and was later found to have been convicted of more than four misdemeanor larcenies — came in and, true to her personal brand, began shoplifting perfumes. When the guard confronted the woman, she became upset and tried to bite the man. He was not injured, and would thankfully not need any shots. The repeat offender was arrested, but must have struggled, as the police report states a handcuff was damaged during the incident.

Liquid Gold Police responded to a Showmars on Providence Road last week after someone targeted their stash of vegetable oil. According to the report, an unknown suspect came to the location overnight and went right for the storage shed behind the building. The thief used a truck to pull the doors off the shed and made off with 1,700 pounds of vegetable oil, valued at $900.

Get Off My Lawn Police officers must have been rolling their eyes when they had to respond to a neighborly dispute in east Charlotte last week because a man would not stand for seeing his neighbor help out with the landscaping. The 54-year-old "victim" in this case called police on one of his neighbors for trespassing on his yard because she was spreading mulch in her own yard and he thought some might have gone onto his property and up against his privacy fence. Bah humbug.

Bait and Switch While many beer and wine thieves that target gas stations tend to use the grab-'n'-go method, one man tried a new method that we'll call the BOGO. The man figured that if he bought one bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, the cashier wouldn't expect him to steal another, although the cashier reported having already seen the man slip a second bottle in his back pocket while he was attempting to pay for the first one.

Tough Little Mutt A man in southwest Charlotte didn't exactly pull a Clark Griswold last week when he pulled off from a shopping center without realizing what was on his bumper, but he did have to file a report for lost property after his phone won out in a battle for survival with his wallet. The man said he had placed the phone and wallet on the back of his car while placing bags inside, and forgot until he was about a mile down the road and someone flagged him down to inform him about the phone. The wallet, however, wasn't so lucky, and he wasn't able to find it anywhere on the route.

Dong Bong Police carrying out a traffic stop in Pineville last week came across a man who was apparently turning up in style. The police reported that the suspect was found to be holding a cup with an alcoholic beverage in it when he was pulled over, and following a search, they found the suspect to be in possession of a marijuana pipe shaped like a penis. The driver was arrested on scene.

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